


Customer Service With a (Forced) Smile

by INMH



Series: trope-bingo fanfiction fills 2019 (2nd Half) [4]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (can you fucking guess what I do for a living), Alternate Professions, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Retail, Background Relationships, F/M, Humor, Off-screen Relationship(s), Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 17:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20933930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: AU. Kara really needs a change of career.





	Customer Service With a (Forced) Smile

“I’d like to make a complaint.”  
  
Kara plastered on a customer-service smile even as she felt her soul shriveling a little at those words. ‘_I’d like to make a complaint_’ was a sentence that retail employees fear above all others. “What’s the problem, ma’am?”  
  
The woman shoved a coupon in Kara’s face. “The cashier won’t let me use this coupon, and he was quite rude to me about it.”  
  
Bullshit, Kara thought.  
  
There was only one male cashier on right now, and that was Ralph; he was a timid soul who tended to flinch when customers got snappy with him, and wouldn’t have had it in him to cop any sort of tone with a customer. If it had been North, Kara would have believed it- of course, if it were North she had spoken to, she probably would have scared this woman out of the store (and county).  
  
Kara took a deep breath and examined the coupon, already suspecting what she would find:  
**  
** VALID THROUGH: 9/01/2018-12/31/2018  
  
Yup. There it was.  
  
Ninety-five percent of the time when a customer complains about a coupon not working, it’s usually because the coupon in question is expired. And Kara had found that the five percent of times when it was a legitimate error on hers or the store’s fault, the complainant tended to be a thousand times more pleasant.  
  
Kara kept a calm expression plastered to her face- no smile, that tended to be like waving a red flag in front of a bull when a customer was irritated- and put the coupon down on the counter, pointing to the expiration date. “So, this has actually expired, and so we wouldn’t be able to-”  
  
The woman held up a hand, frowning as though Kara had just said something unexpectedly offensive. “What do you mean _expired?_”  
  
“Uh-” Kara had to think carefully about her words before she spoke them. This was hardly the first time a customer had taken a reasonably simple concept and made sound like rocket-science-level difficulty, but it always required that she monitor her tone and not say anything even remotely close to ‘It means the coupon is expired, you absolute dumbass of a woman’.  
  
(God, everyone talked about how sweet Kara was, but if they ever read her thoughts at work that illusion would go away real fast.)  
  
“…What I mean is that this coupon was only good for four months, from September first to December thirty-first of last year, and-”  
  
“I got it _yesterday._”  
  
Lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, _lie._  
  
There is no way in _hell_ that she’d gotten a coupon from a _year_ ago yesterday. Not a chance. If the company had fucked up, there would have been a notice passed out to the stores and Ralph would have just given her the discount without a word. Why the hell did people think that they could lie to Kara about this? Did they really think that retail workers were idiots that weren’t smart enough to figure out when a customer was bullshitting them?  
  
(Yes. The answer, she found, was _yes._)  
  
The majority of customers were either lovely or unnoticeable, in that they weren’t super friendly but also didn’t cause trouble- but the minority of customers who _did_ cause trouble did it loudly, proudly, and with as much kicking and screaming as Kara’s daughter had done as a toddler (more, even- Alice was a quiet kid by nature). They flipped out about expired coupons, gift cards not loading properly, cashiers giving them four quarters instead of a dollar bill for change, items that they bought four years ago and wanted to return without a receipt.  
  
It was _insane._  
  
Frankly, it was no wonder that Daniel had lost his shit and attacked that guy last Christmas. ‘Holiday of Peace and Goodwill’- right. More like ‘Holiday Where Every Single Person Who Enters a Retail or Grocery Store Becomes a Rabid Savage Out for Blood.’ Still, it was part and parcel of the job and Daniel had been fired regardless of whether or not ‘that dumb motherfucker was asking for it.’  
  
And that would be Kara’s fate too if she said _exactly_ what she wanted to say to this woman that was lying to her and giving her attitude over an expired coupon.  
  
“Regardless of when you got it, it is expired and we physically are not capable of using it.”  
  
That was a little lie- they _could_ force it through on the register a few different ways, but the ruder the customer, the less likely Kara was to capitulate to them.  
  
The woman fixed Kara with an ugly, _ugly_ look, and then crossed her arms and didn’t speak.  
  
But she didn’t leave, either.  
  
This was a rare situation, a customer actually trying to intimidate an employee into capitulating to them through silence and the evil-eye.  
  
“Kara?”  
  
Kara turned and saw Chloe peeking through the doorway behind her. The customer service desk stood in front of a room where they marked down or boxed up returns, or held items that had been reserved online for customers. “Yes?”  
  
“You want me to get a manager?”  
  
“_Yes!_” The woman snapped, glaring now at Chloe instead of Kara. “I would absolutely _love_ to speak to whoever is in charge here.”  
  
_Oh, lady, you don’t know what you’ve just done._  
  
“Get Hank,” Kara said very, very quietly, even though there was no harm in the customer hearing it because she wouldn’t know what it meant.  
  
But Kara and Chloe sure did.  
  
There was one store manager (Elijah), and three assistant managers: Hank, Markus, and Rose. Rose was the manager you called if you need a soft touch and someone that a customer would be reluctant to be mean to; Markus was the one you called if you needed a serious and honest face.  
  
And Hank was the one you called if you needed someone with the authority and willingness to bitch out a customer.  
  
Kara took a really _savage_ pleasure in siccing Hank on customers like this one.  
  
The smile returned to her face as Chloe scuttled off, and if the woman noticed that it was a little edgier and sadistic than it had been before, she made no mention of it. But then, why would she? Most pain-in-the-ass customers felt victorious when they managed to summon a manager to deal with them.  
  
_Let’s see how long that lasts._  
  
Hank arrived within two minutes, offering Kara a nod before fixing a flat look onto the customer. “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”  
  
The customer thrust the coupon at him. “Your employees will not let me use this coupon, and they’ve been very _difficult_ in finding a solution for it.”  
  
Kara saw him smirk a little- the benefit of being known as sweet and friendly meant that when a customer came to complain about Kara being ‘difficult’, Hank (and anyone else) would know that they were full of it. “Maybe you can sort it out,” Kara said tactfully, before stepping back and leaning gently against the wall to watch the fireworks.  
  
Hank looked at the coupon, eyes scanning over the expiration date- his gaze flicked briefly to Kara, whose eyebrows rose slightly- and then looked back to the customer. “Looks like it’s expired.”  
  
“I want to use it.”  
  
“You can’t use it. It’s expired.”  
  
“So you sent me a coupon that I can’t _use?_”  
  
“We sent you a coupon valid from September 1st to December 31st. It’s not our problem that you didn’t have time to come into the store for four months.”  
  
The woman huffed. “I just got it yesterday.”  
  
“I seriously doubt that.”  
  
She gasped. “Are you calling me a _liar?_”  
  
“Yes,” Hank responded flatly. “That, or you’re illiterate.”  
  
Kara bit her lip to hold back the laughter threatening to bubble up.  
  
“Ex_cuse_ me?”  
  
“I’d like to,” Hank said, calmly and deliberately ripping up the coupon, “But somehow I think that even if I excuse you, you’ll still find something to complain about.”  
  
The woman’s mouth dropped open, and Kara turned away so that she wouldn’t see her smirking.  
  
“_I- Will- Be- Contacting- District!_”  
  
“You do that, ma’am!” Hank called, and Kara looked up to see her storming towards the front doors. “And have a _lovely_ day!” When he turned back to Kara, he rolled his eyes. “Another day in paradise.”  
  
“Thank you, Hank,” Kara giggled, sliding back behind the customer service desk.  
  
“Oh, it’s my pleasure. _Please_, don’t hesitate to call again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Connor caught some twelve year-olds trying to lift something from the toy section and I need to put the fear of God into them.”  
  
Kara shook her head as he walked off.  
  
_God, I need to consider a change of career._  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> [Swallows a gallon of vodka]
> 
> So that's the retail experience.


End file.
